Coin News

Treasured possessions
THE recent court case surrounding the metal detectorists who discovered a Viking hoard of coins and jewellery in Herefordshire in 2015, has attracted a great deal of attention and debate in recent weeks. We discussed details of the hoard back in July and John Andrew’s...

What a year
DECEMBER is always a good time to take stock of the year, whether that’s personally, professionally or numismatically. What, I wonder, have been your highlights of 2019? Have you added much to your collection? Have you perhaps disposed of some of it and rationalised a little? Have...

It's almost time for the Midland Coin Fair! Our last of 2019! Sunday, December 8 sees the larger Midland Coin Fair at the National Motorcycle Museum just by the NEC, Birmingham. The fair is actually a regular one that takes place every second Sunday of the Month but four times a year (March, June,...

Some of you may have read in the Daily Telegraph recently that the Royal Mint are to give away up to one million silver threepenny pieces in a bid to stimulate coin collecting which, the newspaper says, is in danger of dying in this digital age. Well, two things, firstly coin collecting is...

The latest 50p offering from the Royal Mint celebrates 30 years of those lovable Nick Park creations Wallace and Gromit.
Featuring the Latin inscription ‘CASEUS PRAESTANS’, which translates to ‘cracking cheese’, the coin is inspired by Wallace and Gromit’s adventures in the original short film,...

The Famous Who?
THE RECENT announcement that a coin celebrating the life and work of our childhood favourite, Enid Blyton, was vetoed for fear of a social media backlash seems to have attracted a reasonable amount of media attention, but why? The decision, which was actually taken in 2016 and...

Piedforts (a french term literally meaning"heavy foot") are double thickness coins usually used as presentation pieces. In recent years these hefty coins have proved popular amongst collectors and now the Royal Mint has announced that their two "50 Years of the 50p" sets (one Military based and...

When we went to press with the second edition of Spend it? Save it? the latest mintage figures for the 2018 coins weren't available - well now they are and they make for some interesting reading...
Of particular note are the numbers for the highly collected 50p coins which shows NO shield back...

Following on from the success of the first Gruffalo coin launched earlier this year, and to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Julia Donaldson's enduring children's classic, the Royal Mint is launching a second Gruffalo 50p coin, this time featuring the lovable beast meeting Mouse in the forest...

We've known for some time that the new £20 note will feature JMW Turner and one of his famous paintings "The Fighting Temeraire" but the final design was unveiled on October 10 and will feature the following anti-counterfeit measures:
large see-through window with a blue and gold foil on...

It's almost that time again with the numismatic season about to start at the newly named Biltmore Hotel (formerly the Millennium Hotel) Grosvenor Square in Mayfair which, after a year undergoing a refurb, is now ready once again to host the BNTA's flagship Coinex Coin Fair.
The show takes place...

Two types of people THE recent unveiling of the Chew Valley Hoard of Norman Conquest era pennies at the British Museum seems to have caught the imagination of the public, or at least the press (see our own story on pages 38–40). Most newspapers, serious news websites and news programmes have...

Some amazing rarities are coming under the hammer later this month at Spink in London. The Waterbird Collection of English Coins includes some exceptional pieces such as the Edward VIII pattern penny, a unique 1808 penny, a Charles II two guinea piece of 1681 and a George IV pattern half-crown of...

The face of the future
THE news that Alan Turing is to be the face on the new £50 probably didn’t come as much of a surprise to many. Yes, here at COIN NEWS, we quite liked the idea of Mary Anning featuring alongside a stegosaurus or two but Turing is a worthy choice. There was the inevitable...

All’s fair…
IN “News and Views” this month there is a story about a D-Day Anniversary €50 coin struck at the Monnaie de Paris on June 6 and launched at the Pegasus Memorial Museum in conjunction with Samlerhuset. Striking coins “on the day” of an anniversary and having lavish launches for them...

It's with great sadness that we learn of the passing of Tony Schorman of Lir coins, Dublin on July 11 2019. Tony would have been known to many of our readers in Ireland, having run Lir coins in George's Sreet Arcade for many years and having "stalled out" at most of the Coin fairs in Dublin. Tony...

Cashless or less cash?
Following the recent “will we or won’t we . . .” interest in the proposed demise of our lowest coin denominations and the ever-growing call by the vociferous few for the banishment of all kinds of cash transactions, we have invited our regular columnist DR KERRY RODGERS to...

To mark the 75th Anniversary of Operation Overlord - the invasion of Northern Europe which started on D-Day, June 6, 1944, with the largest amphibious assault in history - the Royal Mint have launched a commemorative £2 coin featuring the five beaches (Omaha, Utah, Gold, Juno and Sword) where the...

The fourth Salisbury Collector’s Show takes place May 17–18, 2019 at its now established venue of Salisbury City Hall (off Fisherton Street), Salisbury, SP2 7TU. Organised by the Salisbury-based and highly respected stamp dealers Dauwalders, the fair has seen visitor numbers increase year on year...

ORGANISERS and promoters of the first Plymouth Antique and Collectors Fair held last November at the Plymouth Guildhall were justifiably pleased with the outcome of their inaugural event. They rightly judged the need for a good collectables fair west of Bristol and are to be commended for locating...

One of a kind
BACK in February the COIN NEWS team attended the Irish International Show in Dublin and had the privilege to handle (carefully of course) the unique 1952 penny pictured on this month’s front cover and which is now due to come up for auction at Baldwin’s of St James’s on June 12....

Market forces
IN THIS month’s magazine we include an interview with Richard Lobel of Coincraft. The interview was originally supposed to concentrate on Richard’s 60+ years in business, however, as is often the case with these things, the topic strayed a little onto to subject of the secondary...

Barely a week after the unveiling of the Stephen Hawking 50p comes the announcement that yet another commemorative 50p is now available from the Royal Mint. This new coin goes back to the Beatrix Potter Theme that has proved so popular in the past few years with Peter Rabbit making yet another...

The Harrogate Coin Fair takes place this weekend at The Old Swan Hotel, Harrogate, HG1 2SR. the fair is open from 11am to 6pm on Friday and 9.30am to 3pm on Saturday.
Harrogate is a beautiful town and well worth the visit; even if you don't buy any coins you can always go for tea at Betty's!...

The Royal Mint has announced that the life of one of the world’s most well-known physicists, the late Stephen Hawking, is to be celebrated on a 50p coin.
The scientist – and his ground-breaking achievements – will be honoured on a 50p piece featuring a design influenced by Hawking’s pioneering...

Thinking bigger
AS many of you will know we also publish a magazine, and a variety of books, on medals (the decoration type as opposed to the medallion type) and we often sum up the difference between coins and medals as, essentially, one being more about the object (the die varieties, the...

The latest 50p coin from the Royal Mint features the Gruffalo, Julia Donaldson's scary but delightful monster who first appeared in 1999, and is available now. Apparently there are gold, (coloured) silver and BU versions available but it is NOT going to go into general circulation so not one to...

What makes a complete collection? AS we go to press we learn that Britannia is coming back! She will appear again on the 50p but only for a select few: those who visit the Royal Mint Experience in Llantrisant, South Wales and who “strike their own coin”. Rather interestingly the Royal Mint...